Bound in Benin

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Lieut. A Manson

Published:

2021

Publisher:

Routledge

These extracts are taken from boys and girls’ magazines and annuals in the years 1880–1939. They were a response to the publications known as ‘penny dreadfuls’ (serialized, sensationalistic stories of crime and horror). Amongst the earliest of these new kind of magazines was the Boys’ Own Paper (BOP), published by the Religious Tract Society (RTS) in 1879. The founding values of this publication, and others that followed, was the belief that the youth would read and have instilled in them Christian moral values. In its early phase the BOP stressed the missionary aspect of Empire, perhaps not surprising, given that the clergymen who had founded the RTS in 1799 had, four years earlier, founded the London Missionary Society. The paper and its companion, the Boys’ Own Annual, promoted the British Empire, particularly in their first decade. Among those who wrote for the paper were Arthur Conan Doyle, R. M. Ballantyne, Jules Verne and G. M. Henty. Alfred Harmsworth noted that his stable of publications aimed to eradicate ‘the miserable literary rubbish, in which murders, thieves and other criminals are raised to the position of heroes’. The BOP reflected Britain’s position as a leading imperial power and its description of the races of Empire invariably include pejorative language. By 1900 the BOP was being challenged by other titles, such as those published by Edward Brett. These titles included The Boys of the Empire, published by Andrew Melrose and edited by Howard Spicer; G.…

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